Tool Mentor:  Detailing a Business Use Case Using Rational RequisitePro

Purpose

This tool mentor describes how to use Rational RequisitePro® to describe a business use case in detail.

Related Rational Unified Process information: Activity: Detail a Business Use Case

Overview

After the business use cases have been identified, as described in the Rational Rose® tool mentor titled Finding Business Actors and Use Cases, you can use RequisitePro to develop a Business Use-Case Specification document.

Note: When you start your project, you can develop the use cases in Rose and generate use-case requirements in RequisitePro using the Integrated Use Case Management feature. Refer to Tool Mentor: Managing Uses Cases with Rational Rose and Rational RequisitePro for more information.

You can use sections of the Business Use-Case Specification document to create specific requirements. These requirements can be traced (or linked) to other requirements, such as product features.

The business designer writes a business use-case specification document for each business use case. This document defines all textual properties of the use case and may elaborate on the name and description of the use cases. (See Activity: Find Business Actors and Use Cases.)

Tool Steps

To detail a business use case using Rational RequisitePro:

1. Add the Business Use-Case Specification document type to your project (if necessary)
2. Create a Business Use-Case Specification document
3. Complete the Business Use-Case Specification document
4. Create requirements in the detailed Business Use-Case Specification
5. Add diagrams to the Use-Case Specification (optional)

1.  Add the Business Use-Case Specification document type to your project (if necessary) 

To use the Business Use-Case Specification outline provided in RequisitePro, you must have the Business Use-Case Specification document type in your project. (To check whether you have it, select the project in the Explorer, and then click File > Properties. Click the Document Types tab, and see whether that document type is listed.) If the document type is already available to your project, you can move on to procedure 2.

Tool Steps

To add the Business Use-Case Specification document type to an open RequisitePro project:

1. In the Explorer, select the project, and then click File > Properties. The Project Properties dialog box appears.
2. Click the Document Types tab and click Add. The Document Type dialog box appears.
3. Do the following:
   • Type "Business Use-Case Specification Document Type" in the Name field.
   • Type a description for the document type.
   • Type a file extension. The file extension is applied to all documents associated with the document type.
   • In the Default Requirement Type drop-down list box, click "Use-Case Requirement Type."
   • In the Outline Name drop-down list box, select "RUP Business Use-Case Specification."
4. Click OK to close the Document Type dialog box.
5. Click OK to close the Project Properties dialog box.

For More Information

Refer to the topic titled Creating and modifying document types (Index: document types > creating) in the RequisitePro online Help.

2. Create a Business Use-Case Specification document

The Business Use-Case Specification document contains the use case’s textual properties. This includes the following use-case properties: name, brief description, basic flow of events, alternate flow of events, preconditions, postconditions, and special requirements.

Note: If you have developed your use cases in Rose, you can use the procedures described in the tool mentor Managing Use Cases Using Rational Rose and Rational RequisitePro to create a new use-case document that is associated with your Rose use case. If not, use the following tool steps to create a use-case document.

To create a Business Use-Case Specification document:

• Click File > New > Document. The Document Properties dialog box appears.
• Type a name, description, and file name for the document.
• At the Package field, either accept the default package or click the adjacent Browse button and select the package in which you want to place the new document.
• At the Document Type field, select "Business Use-Case Specification Document Type." Click OK. The outline for the Business Use-Case Specification document opens in Microsoft® Word.

For More Information

Refer to the topic Creating requirements documents (Index: documents>creating) in the RequisitePro online Help.

3. Complete the Business Use-Case Specification document

In the newly created Business Use-Case Specification document, you type information relevant to each section of the business use case. The name and the brief description properties should already have been documented in Activity: Find Business Use Cases and Actors in Rose.

To complete the Use-Case Specification document:

1. In the Use-Case Specification document, replace the "Use-Case Name" text in the outline with the actual name of your use case.

   Note: If you created the use-case document using the procedures described in the tool mentor Managing Use Cases Using Rational Rose and Rational RequisitePro, the use-case name is inserted automatically in the title of the document. Use the RequisitePro > Requirement > Cut and Paste commands to move the use-case requirement to the "Use Case Name" text.

2. After reading the default instructions in the Brief Description field, delete the instructions and type a brief description of your document.

   Note: If you developed the use case in Rose and want to include the Rose documentation field as part of the brief description section in your RequisitePro use-case document, copy the text from the Documentation field in the Rose Use-Case Specification dialog box and paste it into your use-case specification document.

3. Replace the default text located in the Basic Flow of Events section with the text for this use case’s basic flow of events. Use a step-by-step description, in which each step is identified on a separate line.
4. Repeat this procedure for the other use-case properties (alternate flow of events, special requirements, preconditions, postconditions, and so on).
5. Click RequisitePro > Document > Save.

For More Information

Refer to the topic Saving requirements documents (Index: documents>saving) in the RequisitePro online Help.

4. Create requirements in the detailed Business Use-Case 
Specification

Create RequisitePro requirements from the Business Use-Case Specification sections. Mark the use-case name as a parent requirement and its properties as child requirements. These properties may include brief descriptions, actions within the basic or alternate flow of events, preconditions, postconditions, special requirements, and extends relationships.

To create requirements in the Business Use-Case Specification document:

1. In the Use-Case Specification document, select the complete text of the use-case name.
2. Do one of the following:
   • Right-click and select Create Requirement.
   • Click RequisitePro > Requirement > New.
     The Requirement Properties dialog box appears.
3. Select UC as the requirement type.
4. On the Attributes tab, select the Property attribute value of "Name" from the drop-down list of use-case properties.
5. Repeat the preceding steps for the brief description (setting the Property attribute to "Brief Description"). On the Hierarchy tab, select <choose parent> and identify the UC requirement representing the use-case name.
6. In the basic flow of events section of the Use-Case Specification document, create UC requirements for each step or group of steps (subflow) to which you want to set traceability links. Set the Property attribute to "Basic Flow," and set the requirement’s parent to the use-case name requirement created in Steps 1-3 above. Note that it is not necessary to create requirements for each step in a flow of events.
   
   Optional step: You can indicate groups of steps that are always performed together. If necessary, use hierarchical requirements to distinguish subflows from the basic flow of events.
   
7. In each alternate flow of events, create UC requirements for each step or group of steps (subflow) to which you want to set traceability links. Set the Property attribute to "Alternate Flow" and the parent requirement as indicated previously. Similar to the basic flow of events, use hierarchical requirements to indicate complete subflows.
8. The following steps are optional:
   • In the pre-conditions section of the Use-Case Specification document, select each pre-condition separately and create a UC requirement (Property = Pre-conditions, parent = use-case name requirement).
   • Repeat the same step for the post-conditions (Property = Post-conditions) and the special requirements section (Property = Special). Set the use-case name requirement as their parent.

For More Information

Refer to the topic Creating requirements in a document (Index: requirements>creating) in the RequisitePro online Help.

5. Add diagrams to the Use-Case Specification (optional)

Some of the use-case properties are non-textual, such as "use-case diagrams" and "other diagrams". See the RUP Artifact: Use Case. These diagrams are stored in Rose. Using Rational SoDA®, you can create a Use-Case Report from the use-case textual properties stored in RequisitePro and the use-case diagram information stored in Rose. See Report: Business Use Case on how to create this report.

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